Hi everyone! We’ve seen many discussions and questions about the VT-4 tank, as well as the implementation of various Chinese vehicles in War Thunder. We want our decision-making process to be as open and clear as possible, so today we’d like to explain our approach to new subtrees and balancing vehicle characteristics in detail.
Question:
How do you decide which trees and subtrees to add to the game and how to distribute the vehicles within them? For example, could you explain the origin of the idea to add Thai vehicles to the Japanese tree?
Answer:
To keep things fresh and exciting for new and old players, and to help with gameplay and progression, we add new vehicles to the game with every major update. For instance, we might introduce vehicles with cool new features, a whole new nation, or even a subtree of vehicles for an existing nation.
War Thunder’s current progression system requires a somewhat large number of vehicles that are capable of combat, typically at least five to six per rank, to develop a new and fully independent research tree. This means that only larger military vehicle manufacturers and operators can receive their own tree, such as the current nations we have in game.
There are however many nations that have vehicles in service (or in production) that many players would find interesting, but these nations don’t have enough options to form a cohesive independent research tree with no gaps across the eras. As a result, when adding these kinds of nations to the game, the best option for gameplay and progression is to add them to an existing research tree. This is what we did with South African vehicles for example, which were added to Great Britain.
Even some larger operators still lack enough vehicles or vehicle variety to form a fully-fledged research tree, or at least struggle to form full lineups at certain Battle Ratings. Similarly in these cases we try to find nations with enough combat vehicles that could be added as a subtree to effectively add more gameplay options. Hungarian vehicles have helped the Italian tree for example. By including these vehicles here, stronger and more varied lineups can be created to improve gameplay.
This is the same with Japan. Thailand has several interesting combat vehicles that complement the current Japanese tree from a game design perspective, adding new playstyles and options to make the tree more competitive and diverse overall. We’re also considering other Asia-Pacific countries as possible additions to existing nations in the game. For example, Indonesia for Japan, and Singapore for China. This does not mean that all of our current ideas will necessarily be implemented. Within the team, we’re constantly thinking about and discussing various vehicles that would be nice additions to the game until we find an optimal solution.
We see that even the theoretical possibility of a Thai VT-4 being added to the Japanese tree is perceived with sensitivity by some players, as the tank for Thailand is produced in China. Ultimately, it is very difficult to fully distance oneself from politics when real flags and vehicles are used in the game. We apologize if this has created uncertainty or discomfort amongst players. This was not and never will be our intention.
As you know, we always avoid any kind of politics and focus solely on creating interesting games. All of our ideas regarding new additions to War Thunder, including the Thai subtree, are purely aimed at improving progression and gameplay. There is no intention to create a political statement with anything that we include in the game, as doing so would benefit no one and only cause negativity and discomfort. We do everything possible to ensure all War Thunder fans around the world can play together and have fun.
Question:
How do you address the Chinese community’s feedback on Chinese vehicles in the game and potential inaccuracies of their implementation in War Thunder?
Answer:
War Thunder has a huge library of military vehicles from different eras and environments. Despite our large team of developers with their own extensive technical and historical knowledge, it is impossible to know everything about all vehicles. We often have to deal with language barriers, secrecy and often contradictory information, which is especially true for modern military vehicles.
We are always as objective as possible when reviewing reports of potential bugs or requests to change certain parameters that affect gameplay balance. At the end of the day we’re all human, and we will make mistakes and miss things.
We regret if any decisions or changes appear biased to some players. We always aim to fix technical issues as fast as we’re able to, including those that come from player bug reports. However, we will never make changes simply because one particular group of players requests it. We treat all trees equally in this way, and will not buff or nerf vehicles without justification.
Having said this, we always analyze feedback and will change things if it improves progression through the game, improves balance, or makes gameplay more interesting and enjoyable. This is as long as the changes don’t contradict the principles of realism we want to maintain in the game, however.
We’ve seen the list of complaints circulating in the Chinese community. As we do with all feedback from all players around the world, we’ve analyzed it, discussed it internally, and found many points to incorporate into our future plans. Some of these more broad points we’ve already talked about, others will be addressed in the near future — analyzing feedback cohesively takes a lot of time, and with such topics we want to be thorough.
Thank you for attention and time, we hope these answers will clarify our position on these issues. We deeply appreciate your enthusiasm and passion for War Thunder. Thanks for sticking around with us!
A small reminder that you can always leave ideas, questions and suggestions on our forum. We look through everything carefully. Don’t forget to report any bugs or inaccuracies on the Community Bug Reporting platform.